Page 73 of Constantly Cotton
“We’ve got medics on the way, and the rest of the team. It’s time for my crew to leave this place and to clean it up and to make it look like we were never here. Too many questions otherwise. Our final op is tonight, and we’ll be running it from a hotel room in Tahoe. It’s time for you to drive away and resume your regularly scheduled life.”
Cotton shook his head, his shiny eyes overflowing in a way Jason hadn’t seen since those very first days when he’d been almost too sick to remember.
“I want to stay with you,” he whispered.
And Jason’s own eyes burned. He needed to be honest, he thought, with a lump in his throat. “No, you don’t,” he rasped. “Because it’s going to hit you eventually, what you watched me do today, and I don’t want to be here when you look at me like I’m a killer. I’d rather have you leave now, when you still remember me as your lover and you think I’m an okay guy.”
Cotton shook his head, rejecting the words, and captured Jason’s hand where it rested on his cheek. “That’s a shitty excuse,” he said, voice thick. “Because I know exactly what you did today. You saved our lives. And that’s the man I love.”
“And you jumped into the breach and took care of my soldier,” Jason whispered. “And that’s the manIlove. And you need a chance to fulfill all that promise, do you understand me?”
“No—”
“Please?” Jason said, eyes spilling over. “Please don’t make this hard? As soon as the medics get here, you and Rivers and Henry need to go. Grab your stuff now, baby. You don’t have long.”
“Goddammit!” Cotton managed, before Jason captured his mouth, their hot tears, their moments together, their love.
This kiss was bitter and salty, needy and sad, and Jason finally pulled away with a sound he wasn’t proud of.
“Watch for signs, okay? I’ll let you know when I land.”
Cotton nodded and met his eyes. “And I’ll be waiting when you’re ready for me to land with you.”
Jason should have told him no, to forget that dream, to let this moment be it, but Cotton stepped away from him, spinning on his heel, obviously determined not to hear it.
And Jason knew the words would have frozen in his throat.
Ten Hours Later
WATCHING DEAVERScry when Jason strode into the back room of the casino with Burton and two MPs on his six was satisfying, he had to admit.
It wasn’t just that the lanky, dark-haired servicemancried,it was that he turned pale first, and then he put on a ghastly smile and said, “Imagine, you taking your vacation at the same time I am!”
“Oh Jesus,” Burton growled. “Can I kill him?”
“Well, youcan,” Jason told him dryly, “but the real question ismayyou kill him, and no, you may not.”
Deavers wiped his nose on his shoulder, leaving a big glossy slug of phlegmatic contrition.
“Please?” Burton said dryly.
“I didn’t mean for you to get hurt,” Deavers said, looking hopefully back and forth between them, and Jason wasn’t sure what happened next.
One minute, he was standing next to Burton, watching in an almost detached fashion as the serviceman who’d betrayed him was cuffed and frisked and effectively neutralized by two men who might have been doing the same toJasonif Ellery Cramer hadn’t gotten Dietrich Schroeder’s confession on tape and into the record books… and the next minute Burton was hauling Jason off the man, but not before Jason heard thethunkof cartilage as he broke Deavers’s nose.
Deavers howled, and then Jason lost his cool.
“Kids, you asshole! Those people were paying for your guns withkids! And then the kids got away and they were paying for them withme! And then they couldn’t findme,and they were killing their way up through Northern California and Nevada out of sheer rage!What was so fucking important that people needed to die?”
And Deavers started to sob in earnest, and Jason heard something about a child with an illness and expensive treatment that the military’s TRICARE wouldn’t cover, and he had to turn around and walk away.
The last thing he heard was “You would have done it too!” and Jason fought the urge to throw up.
“No, you wouldn’t have,” Burton said.
“But does that make me better or worse?” Jason asked painfully.
“Sir, you need sleep. Are you sure you don’t want to spend some more time at the cabin? Cotton could catch a ride back up just as easy as he caught one down the hill.”